Zero Emissions Foolishness and Carbon Credit Rot
"Carbon Sense"
Common sense on carbon, food, energy and climate.
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Zero Emissions Foolishness
11 July 2013.
Keywords: Zero emissions target, nuclear & hydro power, carbon credit farming, weather forecasting, silencing sceptics, elections.
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The Australian Climate Commission says Australia needs to reduce emissions “to nearly zero by 2050”.
Such a reduction can only be achieved if the Climate Commission has a secret plan to use nuclear power or for a massive expansion of hydro power.
If they do not have such a plan, their “nearly zero” emissions target would force the shut down of most of the energy, transport and industrial infrastructure developed since James Watt invented the steam engine.
Imagine Australia with “zero emissions” – which means zero production of carbon dioxide from human activities and industries.
This would mean zero usage of coal, oil, petrol, diesel or gas, zero production of cement or steel and the shut-down of 92% of Australia’s electricity generators.
Sunbeams and sea breezes cannot supply 24/7 electricity - the only feasible non-carbon options for Australian grid power are nuclear or hydro. Has the Climate Commission joined the nuclear power lobby? Or do they have a secret plan for big hydro developments on the Snowy, the Franklin and the Tully-Millstream?
And how do we keep our diesel-fuelled transport fleet operating? Using big, big batteries and even more nuclear or hydro power to recharge them at every roadhouse in the outback? (But once they eliminate our grazing animals and their emissions, we will not need road trains.)
And how do we keep planes operating? Are they suggesting that we divert most of our sugar production to producing power alcohol?
For cement and steel we could of course try to catch and bury every molecule of carbon dioxide produced, but in reality the costs involved in such stupidity would force closure of these industries, and cement and steel would be imported from more sensible nations.
Some zealots would even like to see the end of our vast herds of cattle, sheep and goats, replacing them with kangaroos.
Unless the Climate Commission can show us a realistic plan for “zero emissions”, with cost benefit analyses, we know it is just more hot emissions from academic zealots.
They must put up, or shut up.
For those who can’t believe the Climate commission said something so stupid, see here:
http://climatecommission.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/The-Critical-Decade-2013_KeyFindings.pdf
Carbon Credit Farming is Unsustainable
The carbon farming caper is supported by all political parties. Under it, landowners can sell “carbon credits” if they can prove that they have reduced carbon dioxide by capturing it as humus in soil, or by planting forests, or by allowing re-growth of woody weeds, or by reducing feral animal emissions (shooting camels) or even by promising solemnly to NOT clear specified parcels of forest.
NONE of these processes are sustainable in the long run.
There is a limit to the amount of humus or trees that can be based on one hectare of top-soil.
And once all feral animals have been shot there are no more carbon credits to be earned there (unless the landowner is also breeding them secretly in the back paddock).
And even in the corrupt carbon market for hot air, only one payment can be legally claimed for promising to NOT clear a parcel of land (and one bushfire will reverse all that in one afternoon).
The whole concept is unsustainable, it encourages corruption, and most of the benefits will go to the big B’s - Bureaucracies, Bankers and Brokers.
African farmers are saying “No” to land-grabbing carbon credit speculators.
Australia should do the same.
For those interested to read more:
Carbon Credit Land grab in Uganda:
Africans to UN: “We don't want your carbon farming.” See here:
http://www.cfact.org/2013/06/19/bonn-endgame-africa-rebels-as-climate-talks-collapse/
Henbury Station, Australia’s big carbon farming experiment goes bust:
http://www.landmanager.org.au/category/keywords/henbury-station
PS If you were so silly as to want a sustainable long-term method to lock away the sparse carbon resources of the atmosphere using “carbon farming”, the ONLY way to do it is to harvest regular crops of trees, pastures, cereals and grazing animals. Then use these carbon-rich products to build homes and feed families, thus creating long-term storage of the carbon in buildings as timber, or in human bodies as flesh and bone.
Finally, when these carbon carriers reach the end of their life, bury the old timber and the dead bodies in deep holes so that the carbon never gets back into the biosphere. Such burial should attract carbon credit payments.
Such a scheme will methodically remove carbon dioxide, the gas of life, from the carbon cycle – a sure way to starve life on Earth.
It is the road to biocide, but that seems to be what the Deep Greens want.
Let’s hope they starve first.
On the Consensus:
"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual."
Galileo Galilei, 1564 –1642